This is what I hope to tell my children about love and dating:

When you're putting a puzzle together, each piece is made to fit into a specific location. To be partnered with another piece. Together, they make part of a whole picture.

You place pieces where they belong, and you pick them up and look for the place where they fit.

You hold one in your hand and try to find its match.

You can, right away, tell where this piece does not belong. If it has green foliage on it, it's not going to belong in the section where there's only blue sky. Or a brick wall. It's going to belong with the other foliage.

Sometimes it looks like it belongs somewhere, so you place the piece down, but when you see them side-by-side, you immediately realize that they are not cut out for each other.

Sometimes, a piece almost fits with another. You lay it down and it seems to slide into place well enough. But the more you look, the more you notice nuances that indicate what you already know to be true-- this is not the right match.

So you have to take the pieces apart. If they're matched closely enough to almost fit, you have to forcefully pull them apart. You might even damage one or both of the pieces in the process of pulling them apart.

But when it happens that you find the true match of the piece in your hand, it's blatantly obvious. "Of course," you think. "That's exactly where it goes. Why didn't I see it before?"

That perfect match piece was sitting there the whole time, quietly waiting for you to discover that you held its partner in your hand. The pieces fit together with such poetic perfection that it seems as if they've always been together.

And the picture as a whole is that much closer to being finished.